A Scientific Mind: part 1
by ThinkingAbout
Summary: This is a series of short stories, in broadly chronological order, covering key moments of the narrative (moments that I find interesting). They are derived partly from the manga/2009 anime, partly from the 2003 anime, and partly from my own imagination and interpretation. Contains adult scenes and themes.
1. Zugehorigkeit

A tendril of chill wind blew down the chimney, and collapsed the ashes in the fireplace with a soft whoosh. An early October frost crystallised the windows, and at nine-o-clock, the sky was completely dark, fronds of cloud streaked across the moon and stars. The room, too, was dim and sparsely furnished.

An old woman, all bones and wrinkled skin, with gnarled hands like tree roots, and a young man, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, sat before the grate. A smokey oil lamp on the table now provided the only illumination, and it flickered as a draft blew in under the door.

The boy shivered, pulling the blanket more closely about his skinny shoulders, and continued to nibble on a sticky bar of chocolate.

The old woman spoke, as small and precise as a pocket watch;

"Are you enjoying your birthday present, dear boy?"

He nodded, and replied, with a slight shiver; "Yes, thank you, aunt."

"And you have had a nice day, away from your studies?"

"Yes, I have. Thank you, it has been enjoyable," he was unfailingly polite, as he had been taught, but tinged with curiosity. Why was he being kept back from bed so late? His brother and cousin would already be asleep by now, cocooned under heavy blankets against the cold.

"Your bother is not yet old enough, but I know you have both started to wonder, now that you are reaching manhood yourself, about your father."

The boy's heart quickened, and he leaned forward to catch every word the woman he called his aunt uttered.

"I must be perfectly honest with you, my boy; I did not like your father. I did not like him one bit!

When he showed up on our doorstep, cold and starved, I would have turned him away. I know it sounds heartless, but I knew that no good man would be out wandering on a night like that. Beatrice, bless her heart, took pity on him, and welcomed him indoors. Sat him by the fire and gave him hot broth to eat, waited on him as though he were a king. A king, mind you! Not a vagabond!"

She shook her head, and looked at the curious boy with a modicum of tenderness.

"She was such a good girl, your mother. I said she had a heart of gold. But she was not clever, or worldly. All that she ever dreamed of was to marry, to keep her own house, and to raise children. When her father - your grandfather - went away to the first desert war, along with my husband, I took her in, and she made my chaotic house bright and homely. She would sing to herself while she peeled potatoes and scrubbed the floors and spun the wool. She took delight in the most insignificant things…"

Her voice trailed off, until she recognised her own sentimentality, and reigned it in.

"That man took advantage of her goodness. He stayed for months, and treated her like his slave. It was much the same after he returned from his wandering. By that point, she was heavy with child - you - and urged him to marry her, so that she might keep her standing in the community. Well, he did so, but he was not happy about it. He lasted barely five years in our household, during which time he was indolent and unfriendly. He rarely joined us for meals, preferring instead to remain in the cellar with his books. Those books are yours, by right, although I cannot see what use you might have for them."

She looked at the cellar door, in the corner of the kitchen, with distaste.

"He frequently ignored his bride, or ordered her to cook for him at all hours of the day or night. He made her do humiliating things for his pleasure, and he had no compassion for her delicate state. It is a miracle that your brother survived to be born! Then, as abruptly as he had come, he disappeared again."

The boy's attention was fixed on her story. It had reached the stage that he could almost remember, when he closed his eyes and concentrated hard. His mother, bewildered and heartbroken, walking for miles and miles, with one son in her arms, the other tripping by her side, looking frantically for her man.

"Well, she had never been strong. The loss of him really was the end of her. She ceased to eat, or to drink water, or to wash herself. She…. she blamed herself. She would ask me what she could have done differently, done better, to have made him stay. I told her truly that no wife could have done better, could have been more attentive or kindly. She cried. Then my Jakob died on the front line, and with him my dear daughter-in-law Lydia. My attention wandered from Bea, while I piloted my granddaughter through the rocks of orphanage, and by the time I looked back, Bea was close to death."

The boy remembered this part well, however he tried not to. The faded pieces of his mother, trying to rise from the floor, her limbs twitching with pain and urgency.

"She wanted me to take care of you and your brother. Not that I would ever have turned you away, even raising an orphaned granddaughter as I was. But she was particularly insistent that no harm should come to you boys. I never met a woman so sentimental about her children."

She shook her head, half-disapproving, half-disbelieving.

"It is up to you what you do with this information. Your father has never returned; he may be alive, or he may be dead. You may have your father's books and writings, for all the good it will do you." He was silent for a long moment, as this new insight to his origins and early life slotted into place, before he remembered his manners.

"Thank you, aunt," he said, "I… I want to read the books, please. And I want to tell Al everything you've told me. We have never had any secrets, and I don't wish to start now."

She shrugged, and mimed dusting her hands; "On your head be it. Now, go to bed."

He nodded, and took the stairs two at a time, bursting to tell his brother what he had heard.


	2. Exodus

From the front of the prayer hall every week, the man stood firm, and reassured a shrinking population of neighbours that the war would end soon, that this impoverished island of peace in a roiling ocean of war belonged to them by divine right. That, however hard the forces of the enemy might crash against their walls, they must not yield. He raised his arms to heaven, giving thanks for the gift of life and the promise of peace to come. As they filed from the hall, thin and grim-faced, he placed his strong hands on each shoulder, kissed each cheek, and blessed them with the protection of god of peace.

For the most part, they chose to believe him, clinging on to the comforting solidity of his words, their unchanging message, heart-felt. They parted at sunset, returning to their homes for another seven days of scavenging or coaxing from the earth enough food and water to feed their children, seeking cover in the wreckage of their homes from ordnance, bullets, ferocious gales of fire and crackling electricity, and praying for the end. Over the past six years, as the conflict advanced on their homes, the front line oscillating to the north and south, they had abandoned their once prosperous town in droves. Whether they made it safely to the south, to seek shelter among their own people, or heading north as refugees in the prosperous nations bordering their aggressors, or whether they perished of starvation, disease or violence on the journey, those who remained did not know. This tiny community of a hundred or so, comprising seven families, huddled about their priest, and would not be moved from their homes.

He returned to his own home with a weary sigh. The light from the sky was dim, and the searing desert heat was quickly disappearing, so he knelt on the floor in the centre of his one surviving room - once the second bedroom of a small but comfortable terraced house - and lit a fire of structural timber beams and dried cow dung in an improvised hearth. In a bronze bowl, he washed his hands, feet and face, running water and a comb through his hair, and then sat back on a thick rush mat, which doubled as a seat and his bed.

Before the war, he had been a moderately wealthy man; the vocation of priest was well-paid. He had been healthy and strong, digging his own land and spending the cooler evenings with other young volunteers, rebuilding the town's fortifications, still in rubble from the first desert war. Now at thirty, he was tired and sinewy from years of restricted food and water, and from worry for his fragile congregation. How much longer could the conflict go on? How much longer could his community survive? The summer had been long and hot, without sufficient rain to replenish the wells. Every day, they dug further down, chasing the diminishing water table. Unless this changed soon, there would be difficult decisions to be made - to give water to the crops or to the animals? To the animals or to the people? To wash, or to have enough to drink?

His anger was futile. He dreamed of striding across the contested zone, and confronting the enemy with the evidence of their crimes; the starving children, the perishing livestock, the sickly, hopeless men and women. In his darker moments, he dreamed of joining the young men who took up arms and charged at their aggressors, in the certainty that they would die, their only hope to take as many of the white devils to hell with them as they could.

He did neither of these things. Outlast them, he told himself and his congregation, we have god on our side. Survive, just survive for another day. This was the thought in his head as he laid it down to sleep. The rumble of continued bombing and gunfire was mercifully distant tonight. Perhaps they would not even come within range of the town walls. An uninterrupted night's sleep was a luxury worth savouring.

The curtain covering the hole in the wall that had once been a door twitched, and moved aside to reveal a young woman. His brother's wife, at nineteen, was shapely and soft, in spite of her starved condition. Her eyes were large and black, fringed with thick lashes, and bright with intelligence. Her lips were full, and quick to smile. Her hair, now loose and tumbled down her back, was thick and dark and smooth. He loved to kiss it, and to tease it apart with his fingers.

She came to him, with a customary smile, sat down on the floor next to his mat, and put her arms around him, placing her head against his broad chest.

"Your mother has the children for the night," she reported, in a low sweet voice, "and Malek is sound asleep. I had to see you."

"You take such risks. What if he wakes and finds you missing?"

She shrugged, and brought her lips close to his ear to whisper; "I'll say I couldn't sleep, and I went for a walk to check on the animals."

He stretched his arms around her back, feeling the individual knots of vertebra through her thin dress.

"Are you calling me an animal?"

She grinned, and pulled his shirt up to run her hands over his stomach and chest.

"Yes. You are an oryx. You can survive for years and years without sustenance from anything but heaven, and you lead the rest of your herd through the desert to safe pastures and cool waters."

He smiled, and kissed her mouth, hungrily.

"Then you are an owl. You hunt at night, and fly so softly that your prey does not know you are coming until your talons are in his back."

She laughed at this, delighted with the idea, and climbed on top of him, wrapping his hips with her thighs.

"I love watching you speak to the people. You are the only thing that keeps them from wandering off into the desert, and dying in the sand or on the end of an enemy rifle."

He lifted her dress over her head, and ran his hands down her naked body, the bones of her throat and shoulders, her small breasts, still full from feeding her newborn, her ribs and hips. Between her legs, she was already wet, and her hands scrabbled eagerly to pull his trousers away.

"You are a wicked woman," he informed her, only half joking.

"I am," she smiled against his lips, "I love this better than anything else. But god made me this way, perhaps to give pleasure to his favourite servant."

"Why didn't you marry me?" he asked, redundantly, for the hundredth time.

She was bored by the question, and raked her teeth across his left nipple in punishment.

"A certain respectability is expected of the wife of a priest. This is not the case for the mistress of a priest."

"You don't care about damnation?" he asked.

She laughed again, and ground her hips closer against his, as he grew harder and harder.

"I would rather be damned than bored and frustrated. Nothing in this life or the next can be known for certain, but I can find heaven on earth in a couple of hours with you."

He clasped her breasts in his hands, and drove up into her. She was tight, and squeezed him expertly.

"I adore you," he gasped.

She trailed kisses like honey along his lips, and then sat back to allow him to bring his mouth to her breasts. She peaked with a delighted cry several minutes later, and he followed close behind. They lay together afterwards, she curled into the crook of his arm, her body gloriously naked, hugged by firelight. He marvelled silently at the beauty of her golden skin.

"Why are we at war?" she asked, without bitterness. She had been a young girl when the conflict had restarted, and women and children were not typically included in the political discussions of the men, which took place over black tea and backgammon during the hot hours of the day.

"You must first understand the concept of a war," he said, stroking his hands idly along her arms, "Wars are not abstract phenomena that happen in a separate world. A war is really a gathering of the tiny individual wars that men wage in their own heads. Every man goes to war for his own reasons, and these determine the war that he fights, or doesn't fight. Take the army of the enemy. They kill our people without knowing them personally, and often without looking them in the eye. Does that make them evil? Not necessarily. They come to war because they perceive their home to be under threat by a tide of asylum-seekers, or because they have been offered a steady wage at a time when their town is in poverty, or because they think that by doing so, they can be a hero in the eyes of their mothers and wives."

She frowned, unconvinced, so he continued.

"Why did their nation declare war on ours? Because their leader is new, and wishes to cement his power by manufacturing an existential threat. In this, he has been successful. His people collectively know little about our people; if he tells them that we are wicked men who sacrifice our children to a bloodthirsty god, and throw unbelievers in the fire, they will believe him."

"Now, why do our men rise to the war? Remember that many of us are the orphans of parents killed in the previous war, living among the ruins of the previous war, haunted by the ghosts and the remembered rage of the previous war. Twenty years ago, the Amestrians brought the war onto our territory, making a grab for reserves of oil and minerals. Victorious, they were able to leave the war behind and return to their homes. We could not do so, because our homes were destroyed. Our men who march in this war feel that they have nothing, and for this - with some justification - they blame the Amestrians. Their rage gives them a ferocious strength and ruthlessness, which plays directly into the Amestrians narrative of our barbarity. After all, by the time their armies reach peaceful settlements like this one, they are generally abandoned."

She nodded, her expression serious.

"Then why do you still have hope that the war can end, my love?"

He kissed her forehead.

"I must believe this. War cannot go on indefinitely. They will be unable to conquer us, so eventually they must retreat. They will claim victory, and our men will claim victory, and then we can bury our dead and continue with our lives."

She clung on to his body, as she clung onto his faith.

"I hope you are right. I so want to believe you. If you ever decide that you must leave this place, I will run with you. The children are yours by right anyway, we could begin a new life together."

He pressed her to his chest, and replied gently; "I will not leave my people, and you must not leave your husband. Survive. Raise strong children who believe in the possibility of peace."

Some hours later, she kissed him goodnight, and wandered back through the rubble-strewn streets to her home. Before dawn, a task-force of ten State Alchemists entered the city walls, and murdered virtually every man, woman and child where they slept. The priest survived by hiding for hours, still as death, in a disused well. Corpses were thrown on top of him, burned, dismembered, beaten. At sunset on the following day, he climbed over them to emerge in the silent town.

Wordlessly, he stumbled through his brother's house, carrying the bodies of his brother and children outside to burn them on a pyre before the carrion birds and jackals could find them. Of the woman, he could find no sign. Perhaps she had run some distance before they caught her. Perhaps hers had been one of the bodies over which he had scrambled, damaged beyond recognition.

Watching the tiny bodies burn, he tore his clothes, thumped his fists hard against his chest, cut at his face with a sharp knife, trying to break through the red fog, to feel something. He left as soon as the pyre burned to ash, walking eastwards into the desert, as far away from all people as he could.


	3. Vocation

In a tiny two-room police station – one shabby office, one shabbier jail-cell – towards evening, a tentative interrogation was taking place. The constable, a one-legged chap, who had been sent home from the Iqbalan front-line three weeks into the conflict, after having been shot in the thigh, and now somewhat large and doughy from his largely sedentary job, had certainly dealt with some trouble-makers during his short career in law-enforcement. But rarely were they so good humoured about it. The young woman before him was jovial and vivacious, whip-thin and wild. Her hair was dark and matted, her sheet-white skin extensively bruised, scratched, grazed, and slightly pink in places from sunburn. If he had to guess, he would have said that she had been raised by wolves.

Out of kindness for her emaciated state, he had placed a bowl of thick broth in front of her as soon as she was placed in his cell, and had donated his own supper of a cheese sandwich. She certainly ate them with enthusiasm, and thanked him in heavily-accented, broken dialect. Drachman. He sighed.

"Do you know why I have taken you in?" he asked, peering at her across the table, once the interrogation had begun in earnest.

She nodded.

"I am looking for work. I have been in the mountains three, maybe four years. I train two years with master in martial arts, not on purpose. Then two years, or maybe three, with master in alchemy," she laughed at her own misfortune, "I live in the mountains, sleep in the mountains, find my food and water in the mountains."

"Very well," the constable replied, cautious now that her martial arts training had been brought into the equation, "So how did you end up in Dublith?"

She laughed again, until tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and slapped her hand down on the thick wooden table, causing a fine crack to appear down the grain.

"I get lost! I am walking through the woods, heading home at the end of my training. I wish to go home, surprise Mama for my twentieth birthday. I go the wrong way. Much climbing, up and then down the mountains, and five days later, I am here. Amestris. What bad luck, I think. How shall I go home now? I know nobody in Amestris. How shall I find food? Fortunately, after two further days walking, I find this little town. I walk around, asking people if they have some work that I can do for a little food and shelter. In a tavern, an old man gives me a suggestion that is lewd and unacceptable to me. I hit him. Quite hard. Through a window."

She was laughing again, smacking her fist into her other palm to demonstrate. The constable pictured his own face where her hand was, and thought carefully before responding.

"You have caused thirty crowns worth of damage to property, as well as the doctors' fees for that old man. How do you propose to pay these?"

She shrugged.

"I can make whole the window. Not much that I can do about the man's face. Human transmutation too advanced for a student such as I."

"I see. Well, you'll have to stay here, as an indentured worker until the man is reimbursed. He is a butcher. You know how to cut meat?"

"Yes. I kill many animal in the mountains, and cut them up to eat. But I am not interested in butchery. I will leave, I think."

The man took a deep breath to control his temper, not wishing to anger the volatile woman in turn.

"If you won't pay for your crimes, I'm afraid I'll have to deport you back to Drachma. You are here illegally, you know."

She laughed again, uproariously.

"Ha! Deport me! You ass! You deport me, I walk over the border again. You deport me again, I come back again. I am in Amestris now, and I leave when I wish."

With that, she stood, stretched her arms over her head and yawned.

"I will stay here tonight," she stated, "It is warmer in this cell than outdoors. Tomorrow, I fix stupid window, and go on my way."

The constable raised his hands in resignation. His training had not included dealing with difficult alchemists. He tried once more to reason with her.

"My dear young lady, please understand, there are laws in this country. You can't just bludgeon a man through a window and then walk out of town. And what of national boundaries?"

At this, she turned stoney.

"Your 'dear young lady' I certainly am not! The man deserved the blow he took for this insult towards me. I will give not one hour of my labour towards fixing his face. I hope it will teach him some manners towards women. I do not recognise your border. I stay."

She strode from the office into the tiny jail cell, pulling the door shut behind her, and laid herself out on the low wooden bench that served as a bed. In the morning, she was indeed gone, the bars over the little square window had apparently melted into a puddle of iron, the window of the tavern on the high-street had been repaired, albeit in a somewhat slap-dash, disfigured fashion, and the butcher was forced to explain to his wife and son why his eye was blackened and his nose broken.

The woman took herself south, via freight trains and flagged-down vehicles. This led, as all roads were known to do, to Central City. She was not the only Drachman there, and found shelter with a large family, who occupied one floor of a cramped three-storey house in one of the outer slums. They were poor and taciturn, but kind to their own people. Other than that, she didn't think much of the city; it was far too large to be walked across easily, crowded with people and vehicles, and for the most part, quite astonishingly filthy. But she was intrigued by the huge college of the State Alchemists, and wandered in there one day to see what they were teaching. Theory. Dry lists of principles and equations and formulae. She departed from the lecture theatre in despair, and headed for the library.

She was not illiterate, having been taught to read by her mother, and enjoyed certain books, especially cookery books and adventure novels. But these texts were far over her head. Why, she wondered, must they make alchemy sound so complex, and at the same time, so dull?

She gave up on the library, and completed her tour with a walk around the parade ground. There she watched alchemists in blue army uniform weaponising their talents, unleashing fire and electricity and sonic waves and devastating punches on motionless straw targets. They laughed and congratulated one another when a straw man was destroyed, mocked when one was missed or left somewhat intact. Her eyes narrowed. They were men, for the most part; young and enthusiastic. Not untalented, certainly. But what did they understand alchemy to be, that they could use it so?

Disgusted, she stalked away from the college precinct. The city was not for her, not at all.

Next, she rode the rails to the west. Many hundreds of miles, stopping to marvel at the valley where technology seemed to be progressing by gargantuan leaps, and men claimed that they could build entirely new men out of gears and pistons and metal skin. She drank beer in hot, smokey cellars with young radicals who bayed for the return of the Republic, while in Ausburg. She felt akin to these ardent young men and women, and she took several of them, one at a time, to bed, and almost set up house with one particularly charming red-headed girl who wore a red bandana, and smoked cigars, and raised her beer glass to toast "Death to the Fuhrer!".

Considering that her adventure was nearing its end, she felt jaded by the road, and the complicit drudgery of Amestrian life under the new dictator. She made her way back north again, looking for real work, real purpose. Once again, she found herself in Dublith, the farthest north the rails would go before Fort Briggs. She wandered down the high-street, the only one that was paved, and observed that the tavern window was still warped and criss-crossed with a spiderweb of tiny fractures, from her hasty repair almost a year previously. She spotted the police constable – now fatter and redder and sweatier in the summer heat – and gave him a cheery wave. He looked embarrassed to see her again, and waved awkwardly before ducking inside the tavern.

She made for the butcher's shop, as they were shutting up for the day. It smelled of blood and caustic soda, which was used to clean and disinfect the floors. She called out to a huge, imposing man who was mopping the front step.

"Hey! Where is the old butcher?"

The man looked her up and down, distrustfully. Drachmans south of the border were generally trouble, in his experience, and quick to pass through.

"I am the woman who hit him in the face," she explained, "and knocked him through the tavern window. Has his face now healed?"

"He is dead," the man growled, "I was his apprentice. I am now the butcher."

She was surprised.

"Did he die from his injuries?"

He lifted his mop and bucket, and headed back inside the shop, throwing over his shoulder;

"No."

She sprinted up to the step, and stuck one foot in the door as he pulled it closed.

"How did the butcher die?" she demanded. The man ignored her.

She struggled with him, to haul the door open again. He was stronger, and the door was the first to give way, its hinges snapping away from the frame. The man sighed, and propped the door against the wall, then walked away into his shop, allowing his unwanted guest to step through.

"I do not wish to trouble you," she said, by way of apology, "I just want to be certain that I did not kill your master."

"He fell out of a high window one night. He was drunk. He was always drunk. But he was an excellent butcher."

She nodded.

"I'm sorry."

He shrugged, unmoved.

"I inherited his business. I too am an excellent butcher."

She looked around the prosperous little shop, taking in the scrubbed floor and surfaces, the neat row of bright, sharp knives, the chalked list of prices above the counter. Her eyes moved back to the man – huge, dark-haired and dark-eyed, utterly ignoring her as he negotiated the door back into its frame. She guessed that he could chop an entire cow in half with one blow.

"Would you like to sleep with me?" she asked.

He turned around slowly, and looked at her with curiosity.

"You don't have a wife, do you?" she continued, as the thought suddenly occurred to her.

Leaving the door to fall back onto the floor, he walked slowly towards her.

"No," he said at last, "I do not have a wife. Business first, then family."

She nodded, agreeing.

"You have the business now."

He reached out a huge hand and, with unexpectedly gentle fingers, tilted her face up, then lowered his own to kiss her, experimentally. His lips were also gentle, questioning. She pressed back harder, to encourage him. There was almost no flesh over her bones. The poor woman wanted feeding.

"Would you like some supper?" he offered. She raised herself up on tiptoes to keep her face close to his.

"No. This first, then food."

He took her hand, and led her upstairs to a small, neat bedroom. All the furniture was made of the same local hardwood, and the bed was covered in a colourful wool blanket that might have been generations old. He lit an oil lamp, and parted the sheets to remove an earthenware hot water bottle. The strange woman was naked by the time he turned back around. Even starved, she was muscular, and her skin was so white it seemed to glow. She folded herself into him, and stroked her hands over his massive arms and shoulders, helped him to undress, and then laughed delightedly as he lifted her up off her feet to lay her on the bed.

Afterwards, he had fallen asleep immediately. She crept downstairs to light a fire, and ransacked the kitchen for ingredients to fix them a large supper of smoked gammon, roast potatoes and buttery carrots. As she was laying the table, he ambled downstairs in a sort of daze. It had evidently been a while since he had had a meal cooked for him, and the sight was welcome.

They sat down together to eat, a jug of beer on the tables between them and two rugged mugs.

"What is your name?" she asked, watching as her companion necked a mug of beer and shovelled his food down with relish.

"Sigurd. To my friends, Sig" he answered.

"I am called Izumi," she said, unprompted, "I have no friends in Amestris, but if I did, they would call me Izumi."

"You have one friend in Amestris," the man said, pointing a thumb at his chest, "Do you know how to cut meat?"

She smiled, and relaxed. It had taken almost seven years of battling and learning and wandering and seeking, but she had found her home.


	4. Still

The rain seemed to be unending in Dublith; for a week great sheets of water had fallen from the sky, dislodging the last of the autumn leaves, and turning the ploughed fields to thick, dreary mud. Inside the Curtis kitchen, however, was dry, warm and bright. In the mid-afternoon, while business was slow, Izumi was turning the small pantry upside-down in the process of baking a cake. Flour, honey, butter and eggs coated most surfaces and half the floor, a stack of bowls filled the sink, and the oven blazed, threatening to ignite the chimney. She worked with manic glee, beating the mixture and then pouring it into a round tin, before slamming the ensemble into the oven, and taking up a mop. When the cake was baked, rising to a beautiful fluffy gold, she took a dish of currants, and arranged them on the top, to spell out the message 'WE HAVE A BABY'. Then she hid the creation in a cupboard, danced happily around the kitchen, and went outside in the rain to chop wood.

After dinner, she presented the cake to her husband, who, after some initial confusion, pulled her into his arms so tightly she felt her ribs strain. They cried together, before settling down to eat cake.

Izumi found the pregnancy challenging; besides the nausea and back-pain, she was forced to become more careful and sedentary than came naturally to her. When they lay together, she would take Sig in her mouth, or in her rear, her own mother having attributed Izumi's tempestuous and lustful nature to too much sex while she was in utero. As an alchemist with an inclination for scepticism, she could not believe this to be true, but the story made her husband laugh approvingly, so they carried on. After several months had passed, they were able to sit together, their hands over her belly, and feel the tiny being moving around. She spoke to it, sang to it, described to it what she was doing as she moved around her daily tasks, imagined what it would look like, what combination of her and Sig's features it would carry, what its voice would one day sound like, what its favourite food would be.

Some weeks before she reckoned she would be due, a day passed in which she did not feel the little creature moving. She did not immediately share her concern, but waited with growing anxiety through the next day. Still no movement. By this point, she did not want to speak of it, could not bring the supposition into being, because then it would be real and inescapable. She had failed. She trudged through the house and into the store-room, where Sig was counting up the day's takings, and she worked her way into the shelter of his right arm, buried her face in his shoulder, and began to cry silently. The doctor was summoned, the bed was clothed in old sheets, and she was given a large dose of ergot suspended in castor oil, which made her vomit copiously, and hallucinate shadowy forms crawling across the ceiling. Then, as the waters broke, the doctor propped her legs open, ruptured the thick membrane with a surgical blade, and commenced to heave the baby from her, while she swam in and out of consciousness, shot through with pain.

Mercifully, it was all over by midnight. The doctor offered to dispose of the corpse, but Sig decided, on behalf of his unconscious wife, that they would deal with it privately. As the sun rose, they sat together, dry-eyed and stunned, the body of the child between them on the bloody sheets. To Izumi, it was perfect in every respect; its tiny hands and feet, fingers curled into little fists, its hairless head, its tiny eyes tightly shut, never to open, its lips slightly parted. Whole and entire, a tiny man.

"Why did this happen?" she whispered, redundantly, "There's nothing wrong with him. He should have lived."

Her husband did not reply, but reached his hand to cover hers. Then he stood, descended the stairs to the kitchen, and boiled a kettle of water to make tea. Still, she sat, trying to fathom how to say goodbye to her son. After tea, she wrapped the little form in one of the ruined bedsheets, and carried it through the falling rain to the woodshed. There she placed it among the logs, and shut and bolted the door.

"We will bury him tomorrow," Sig said, as, exhausted beyond imagining, he began to open up the shop.

Izumi nodded, and padded painfully through to the kitchen, filled up a large pan of water, and set it on the stove to heat, so that she could have warm water to clean the blood from her lower body. As she washed, she thought. Then, an idea having occurred to her, she could not extinguish it. In something like a daze, she dressed herself, took a large leather satchel that had been her travelling bag, and crept back through the house and out the back door, making for the woodshed. Her husband was busy with the day's first customers, so she was unnoticed as she bundled the bloody mess of sheets and child into the satchel, and departed down the road. Neighbours who knew her called out in greeting, or waved. Surely they noticed her flattened belly, and perhaps guessed at the truth, but nobody approached her.

An hour's walking brought her to the lakeshore. She loosed the small boat from its jetty, and without bothering to tip the pooled water from inside it, settled in the centre bench, with the satchel in the prow. Then, with weakened arms, pulled at the oars, travelling as quickly as she could to gain distance before she was discovered missing. Even accustomed to manual labour, her palms were ruptured and bleeding before she reached the island, and her shoulders shook with the effort. Still the rain fell, heavily spattering on the surface of the lake. The water was grey, and the sky overhead was grey. The trees that fringed the lake were vibrantly green with summer leaves.

At last, she reached the island shore, and leapt from the boat into the shallows to pull it ashore. Her head swam; why hadn't she taken any breakfast? She scooped handfuls of the teeth-achingly cold lake water into her mouth, an irony tang from the blood on her palms.

She placed the sheet-wrapped bundle on the ground and then, hastily, she traced a circle on the pebbly beach, using a stick of charcoal from her satchel. The symbols for carbon, building block of life, sodium and iron in the blood, hydrogen and oxygen for the air in the lungs, calcium and magnesium in the bones, aether in the vital spirit. The resulting circle was vast and intricate, and for a moment her courage almost failed her, as she tabulated all the ways it could go wrong. But the alternative was unthinkable, and there was no time to be lost.

She brought her hands together, feeling her way around the circle in her mind, and then brought them – palms down – to the black tracery to ignite the reaction. The impact hit her in the gut like a swift kick, knocking the breath from her. She gasped for air, and struggled to hold on to the vast process. She felt, rather than saw, that her consciousness was being drawn from the material universe, towards another. The join between them, really a rent in the fabric of space and time, was infinitesimal, but that was irrelevant. What was size without matter? The dizzying scale of this awareness made her feel light-headed, insane. Where and what was she?

A terrible pain brought her back to her body; her guts twisted and the matter inside her seemed to rend apart. She could not breathe, could not swallow, and her heart thundered. The pain was maddening, beyond endurance. She was an animal caught in a steel trap. She must die. Her eyes were open, unseeing, to the sky, and blood flowed from between her legs. Her life flowed into the circle, conducted away from her vivid consciousness and towards the gate.

She was overcome by pain, and fear of more pain and of death. With tremendous effort, she lifted her hands from the circle, breaking the circuit and terminating the reaction. She fell forward onto her face, and lay still on the pebbly ground, rain falling over her, mixing with blood and viscera. She had failed again, allowing her son's life to slip away because she could not offer up her own. She cried then, of loss and sorrow and bone-deep exhaustion.

She lay there still when they found her, a search party of concerned neighbours, friends and customers from the town and surrounding area. They carefully lifted her, wrapped her in blankets, and placed her in the hull of a larger boat. Her boat, they tied to the stern, so that it would be towed back to land. The satchel and sheet were recovered, but the corpse was not found. It was known that there were bears and wolves locally, and so it was assumed that it had been scavenged.

She woke in the middle of the following day, clean and warm in her own bed, weak beyond words, and still racked by savage pains. The sounds of business as usual came up through the floor, and the sun shone weakly through a fine mist of rain outside the window. Sitting up made her head spin. Standing was impossible. She waited, feeling hollow and cold, until Sig came to check on her, with a bowl of hot broth and a jug of clean water. His face was grim, but he sat gently on the bed, and scooped her into his arms.

"I'm sorry," she said, hoarsely, "I'm so sorry, love."

He did not rebuke her, although he was certainly angry, saying only;

"Never leave me."

"How am I alive?" she wanted to know.

"Who knows? The doctor is astounded. You have lost much blood, and many of your organs. You should be dead."

"Which organs?" she felt a stab of fear.

"Portions of your stomach, intestines and liver. Virtually all of your womb."

She had known this, somehow. They would never have another child.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, "I've been so thoughtless."

"It's in your nature," he said, without judgement, "But for once, listen to me. Rest. Eat. Sleep. I will join you later."

"Thank you. I hope you can forgive me."

In answer, he kissed her forehead, and lifted her, propped on some pillows, so that she could eat. Recovering her strength for who knew what next.


	5. Succession

The party felt like the last party before the end of the world. To the young captain, at least, as the dregs of seven years of battlefield adrenaline left his system, the mood was not so much celebratory as conciliatory. Congratulations, the assembly of dignitaries seemed to say, you have made it to the other side alive. A score or so squadron commanders and their lieutenants, shambling about the opulent drawing room in their stodgy wool dress uniforms, tailored for them on commission, and now hanging off their skinny, exhausted frames like laundry put out to dry.

The room was dim, and uncomfortably warm; two huge fires kept the night-time chills away, and soft, creamy candlelight glimmered off gilt walls, brass buttons, and the ladies' diamonds. In one corner, the youngest of the Armstrongs – a petite blonde girl, who held a dozen of the society-starved men in sway – sat at the piano, tinkling and crooning her way through a selection of tastefully patriotic and sentimental ditties. The charming effect was somewhat ruined by her gigantic brother, standing behind her with moist eyes and pink cheeks, already drunk, and bellowing and honking along to whichever words he knew, or imagined that he knew. His voice was good, a deep and rich baritone, but it only seemed to have one register, and that was 'loud'. The girl at the piano fairly winced as his voice boomed out still louder at the climax of a pretty tune about the "dear blue mountains of the north".

The captain stood close to a window, where there was at least some cool air, swirling the remains of a cocktail around in his glass, and watching the conversations happening around him. With a sigh, he downed the remaining liquor – a sickly mixture of expensive spirits and vermouth – and deposited the empty glass on the windowsill, before intercepting a serving boy to take another. When he returned to his spot, there stood a lanky, bespectacled figure with mousy brown hair already beginning to grow in at all angles to his head, where he had recently stopped shaving it off. The man raised a glass to him, with a delighted grin;

"I didn't realise they were letting just anybody in to these parties! Here's looking at you, Captain Mustang!"

The captain smiled in response, and clasped the man's hand;

"Hughes! I lost track of you after Ramadi. I thought you'd bought it."

"Ha! It'd take more than a couple of thousand armed men to stop me from going home! That and I was redeployed at the eleventh hour to gather intel on the suspected Chalus tunnel. Every man who marched into Ramadi was dead before the end of the day. I'd have been with them."

He removed his glasses, and cleaned them anxiously with this sleeve. Then sighed, and resumed his smile.

"But, here we are! Back in civilisation, at long last!"

His companion drained his glass, and looked around the room, dubiously. The conversations were punctuated by shrill laughter, and the voices were slightly too loud, with an edge of fear. He perceived that every man present was secretly afraid that they were currently dreaming, and could wake up at any minute, back in the desert. He obtained another two glasses, and passed one to his friend, who in the meantime had found a plate of canapes.

"You should slow down, my friend," he said, taking a piece of spiced sausage on rye bread, coated in mustard, and shoving it into the captain's mouth, "and for God's sake, eat something. You'll be flat on your back in under an hour."

The captain choked the rich, fatty meat down, and spluttered;

"God damnit, Hughes!"

"Sshhh!" the man responded, with a good-natured wink, "You're not in the field any more. You need to remember your society manners."

He shook his head, and leaned closer to the window. The food had the same effect as the overheated decadent drawing room, the perfumed ladies, and the cloying music, making him feel sick and jaded. He gulped at his cocktail, hoping that he could find unconsciousness soon. But his friend would not let him dial out just yet, and was still talking in his ear.

"So where are you being dispatched to next? Have you got your commission through yet?"

"I'm, uh, they're sending me to Ausburg as deputy to the Western Provincial Governor. It's a death sentence, basically."

"That's an honour, man! You're a safe pair of hands. The old man will give you a glowing write-up after three years, and it'll be great for your career"

"Huh. If I don't die of boredom, maybe. And you?"

"Intelligence corps. If I told you, I'd have to kill you," he dead-panned, and then ruined the effect by laughing, "It's going to be great! I'll be back in Central City, I can have lunch every Sunday with my mother, and I can pick up where I left off with Gracia."

He rubbed his hands together with glee. His friend raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"What makes you think she's waited for you? You'd only been courting, what, a year before you were conscripted?"

"Oh, she's all mine, make no mistake. The day I was due to leave, I went round to her house to say goodbye, and I got down on one knee in the front parlour – her mother almost fainted, it was too funny! – and I asked her to be my wife. She said yes, of course, my good little darling girl."

"She could have changed her mind. Seven years is a long time."

At this, the man drew from his breast pocket a dense wad of carefully-folded pages, which he raised to his lips.

"Read them and weep, my friend! Well, actually, don't read them. These are unfit for the eyes of a virtuous bachelor like yourself. I really hope the guys in the Intelligence Corp steamed these open and took a read. They'd give the Fuhrer a few more grey hairs in his beard, alright!"

He cackled with laughter, and mimed a glass eye popping from his left socket, catching it and reinserting it.

In spite of himself, the captain smiled, enjoying his friend's delight.

"You should be careful what you say, you know. Anyone here could be one of his men."

"I know!" he was irrepressible, "Isn't that wild! So in answer to your question, my first action when I get off the train at Central will be to quick-march round to Gracia's, sweep her off her feet, and take her to church so we can seal the deal, and then-" he winked, broadly, "seal the deal."

"Sounds like it's all working out for you," it was an observation of fact, and he hadn't meant to come off as bitter.

"Will you come and be a witness? Stand by your old buddy on the happiest day of his life. Well, not the really happy part, but the part that comes before. Come on, Roy! You have to meet her, she's the greatest!"

"I'll try. I know Bruhns will expect me to attend a briefing as soon as possible, and start to select my staff. But I want to come up to Central anyway, to pay a visit to old man Hawkeye."

Hughes face grew serious, and he looked at his friend with compassion.

"Nobody told you, Roy? Meister Ferdinand Hawkeye passed away over six months ago. Something in his lungs, apparently."

"No. Nobody told me. That means his daughter doesn't know either."

"Well, that's hardly surprising. They were estranged, you know."

"How do you get all this, Maes? Do you read minds or something?"

"Actually, it's much simpler than that, my friend. You just have to talk to people. Come on, I've had enough of this cocktail muck. Let's get some proper schnapps!"

He led the way back across the party to a table near the piano, on which stood a large crystal bottle of clear liquid, packed into an ice-bucket, and many small glasses. Mustang assumed that the reason for the move was less to do with spirits, and more to do with the noise, which would minimise the chances that they could be overheard. Nonetheless, he accepted the shot of schnapps with gratitude.

"To absent friends!" Hughes raised his glass in toast.

"And the ones who won't be coming home," Mustang finished, and they emptied the contents at one swallow.

Hughes shuddered.

"Ah! Anyway, it seems Hawkeye junior was underage when she answered the call to arms. She signed up on her sixteenth birthday, as a private in the infantry. Well, over the past four years, her talent was recognised, and as soon as she got through basic, she was sent straight to the front line as a sharp-shooter. Daddy was horrified, of course. Once he'd gotten over the idea that she was totally without any natural ability as an alchemist, he'd pegged her as the stay-at-home, house-wifey type. Hoped she'd provide him with a son that he could apprentice. Haha! Nope. They'd never had a particularly close relationship. She hinted, in the most gentle way you ever heard, about some kind of injury that he'd inflicted on her at some point, but I never got any more than that out of her. But running away to join the army, and lying about her age and identity, was the end of it. The old man left his property and all his assets, including his writings and his title, to you."

"Christ. Poor kid."

"You don't need to feel sorry for her. She'll always have a career in the military, provided this business of her real age doesn't come out. And even if it does, she's sufficiently talented that I'm sure she'd survive that too. No less an authority than Captain Hans Van Aalten wants her bad for his Iqbal clean-up operation."

"Huh. Well, that's alright then," he poured another glass of schnapps apiece, and handed one to his friends, with the toast, "To Gracia! A woman of rare patience and fortitude!"

"I'll drink to that!"

They were interrupted by the younger Armstrong, Marie, who stepped between them and curtseyed. They returned the bow, and she turned her glowing face on Roy.

"Captain Mustang, this is such an honour. Are you amusing yourself?"

He was flustered, not having spoken to a woman in a social context for some years, but managed to answer;

"Yes, thank you, ma'am. It's a very enjoyable evening."

"I am so glad," she looked it, her smile was sweet, welcoming, "Perhaps you would do me the honour of accompanying me for an introduction to your hostess?"

He blinked, and looked at Hughes. The look on the man's face expressed the same confusion; they had both been under the impression that Major Armstrong, the elder son, was their host. Marie awaited his answer, patiently.

"Of course, ma'am. Please excuse me, I'm quite fatigued."

"Naturally!" she soothed, "You've all had a terrible time of it, I'm sure! Believe me, I would not interrupt your evening, but my sister is peculiarly insistent that you should meet."

He allowed himself to be led from the drawing room, back through the mercifully cool hallway, and up the grand central stairs. As she led him, Marie made small talk about the artworks they passed, and portraits of various deceased members of the clan. Looking up, blearily, he recognised the fierce blue eyes and thick blonde hair, going back through generations. After what seemed miles of walking, Marie knocked on a plain garret door.

"Enter," a low, honey-smooth voice from inside. She pushed the door open, and said;

"Captain Mustang to see you, Oli."

"Show him in. Thank you, Marie. You may leave."

The girl ushered Roy inside, and, with a final brilliant smile, turned to go. The room was cold, and well-lit. It contained a desk and chair, facing the tall windows, an empty fireplace with two deep chairs, and a woman, who stood when he entered. She too wore a dress uniform, that of a Major General. Her hair, like that of her sister and brother, was golden, and fell to her hips.

Her face could have been sweet, as was her sister's, with the same large, round blue eyes, pink pouting lips, and small upturned nose. But the expression was hard, and she seemed to challenge any admiration.

He stood to attention, and saluted at once. She motioned him to be at ease.

"Captain Mustang. You know who I am, I suppose."

"Major General Olivia Armstrong, ma'am. Last time we met, you were a Colonel, and operational adviser to my platoon commander, Brigadier Walmar. I'd been seconded to my first serving post as a state alchemist, and my first honourary title, Second Lieutenant, with your brother as Lieutenant."

"Well remembered. I don't recall meeting you then, but my brother speaks very highly of you."

"That is kind, ma'am."

"He is a soft-headed fool," she remarked, drily, "I'm going to come straight to the point, Captain. I'm sure that you would agree with me in observing that the assumption to the throne of Amestris by the dictator Bradley is a retrograde development for our state."

He was shocked into silence. His nerves, although dampened with schnapps, tingled with the awareness that just hearing these words could have him up on trial for treason.

"One can criticise his protectionist, isolationist defence policies, or point to his totalitarian and populist domestic agenda. His nepotistic plans for succession are cause enough for alarm, and he has relegated the Senate to perpetual leave, citing a continuing state of emergency. Besides all this, I have information that points to a strong ulterior motive for his position. Somebody else got him his throne, and that means that he is being controlled, like a puppet, in pursuit of somebody else's agenda. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

He nodded, agreeing but hardly daring to express it.

"Now," she continued, "once we have supplanted him, I do not wish to take the title of Fuhrer for myself. It comes with a tiresome administrative burden, the focus of popular opinion, and a never-ending parade of public appearances. Furthermore, I would have an uphill struggle on my hands, due to the unfortunate fact of my being female. You do not have the same unfortunate handicap."

She waited for his reaction.

"Ma'am," he swallowed, took a deep breath, and then tried again, "If I understand you correctly, you wish to overthrow Fuhrer Bradley, whom you believe to be under the control of an outside agency, and place an alternative under your control."

"Correct. You would like me to elaborate why you?"

He nodded.

"You are an excellent soldier, a talented alchemist, and a competent leader. You have good situational awareness, and an uncanny ability to survive and deliver the mission in the face of adversity. But you are, if I may be so blunt, nobody.

"I understand that you are a farmer's boy, that your family and community were wiped out while you were at the front, and that you have no name or wealth to speak of. You were then apprenticed to former State Alchemist, Meister Hawkeye, and inherited from him the title of Flame Alchemist. You are a self-made man, to some extent. You are competent enough to climb up the ranks, swiftly and reliably. Yet, you present virtually no threat to the establishment. The old boys will barely notice you. This makes you ideal for my purposes."

He had never been dissected in this way before, and found it unflattering. However, on hearing her perspective, he was compelled to agree. As a pretender to the throne, he was a strategic candidate.

"So what do we do?" he asked, by way of agreement.

"You need do nothing for now, except to progress. Do not rock the boat. Be your competent, difficult, scheming self, and all will be well. Assemble a staff you can trust. I will dispatch Alexander to watch over you, and protect you from harm. At Ausberg, you will find an old, semi-retired Lieutenant Colonel named Karlweis. He was my mentor. I assume you are reasonably proficient at chess?"

He nodded again, there had been precious little else to do, to fill the evenings and days between battles in the desert.

"Make a standing appointment to play chess with him once a week or so. He will advise you in highly discreet terms. He is an excellent tactical mind, and a first-rate pair of eyes. He is also able to communicate with me."

"Where will you be?"

Her mouth twisted with displeasure.

"I am to be promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General."

"Congratulations, ma'am."

"My commission will be the defence of Fort Briggs against the Drachman insurgence in the north. It is not an honour, Captain, it is a banishment. Bradley senses that I conspire against him, and he cannot kill me, because my family support him financially, and with social connections. So he is sending me as far away from Central as he is able, and he will do everything in his power to hasten my death. If I die before our efforts come to fruition, you must take advice from Marie. She is my deputy in this, and she will find it easier to make contact with you. Fabricate an affair, perhaps. You will be the envy of half the men in Amestris."

He was just about keeping up, and nodded to show his understanding. She approached him for the first time, and looked him boldly in the face, as though measuring him.

"You may not hear from me for some time. In these uncertain political times, you may feel that you have been cut off. I will protect your interests, and we will achieve our end. Keep working. Stay out of trouble. Climb the ladder."

He saluted.

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Dismissed!"

He marched to the door on shaky legs, and Marie opened it for him. She waved back inside the room.

"Come down soon, Oli, darling! The gentlemen are pining for some more ladies to amuse them!"

She closed the door on her sister's harsh laugh, and took Mustang's arm to lead him back downstairs.

"Isn't it fun to meet somebody new at a party? You never know where the conversation might take you!" she trilled.

"Indeed. Miss Armstrong, forgive me, is your sister in her right mind?"

He expected her to laugh this off, but instead she pulled him into the shadow of a doorway, so close that he could breathe in her perfume, and the scent of wine on her breath, and she whispered to him.

"Olivia knows what she's doing. I have faith in her. If you are wise, you will too."

Then she kissed him, immodestly, at the corner of his mouth. He was astonished, as she opened three of his shirt buttons and closed them in the wrong order, and then ruffled his hair into disarray with her fingers.

"We have to provide some excuse for your absence from the party," she smiled, "Now when we go back in, act incredibly bashful and defensive when questioned. Do not make eye-contact with me, and try to get a little drunk. Alright?"

He followed her downstairs, touched his fingers to the pink lipstick smudge by his mouth, and prayed that he would not run into Hughes. Naturally, the first person to greet him as he re-entered the party, dazed and full of thoughts, was his friend. He laughed uproariously as soon as the young woman had disappeared into the throng.

"You sly dog! What an excellent evening! Haha! Barely twelve hours back in civilisation, and already you have bedded the most desirable woman it has to offer! After my own Gracia, of course!"

He appeared even more drunk than when Mustang had left, and cheerily handed him another sickly cocktail. As he raised it to his lips, Roy asked his friend quietly,

"Maes. You'll make sure I get home in one piece, won't you?"

The man winked, showing that he was far more conscious than he appeared, and Mustang wondered how much his friend knew.

"I've spent the past seven years doing so, haven't I?"


	6. Kriegspiel

Ausburg, administrative capital of the Western Provinces, had seen better days. Under a century ago, it had been a favoured retreat of the wealthy and idle class, famous for its spa waters, its beer cellars, its ballrooms and its high-end gambling houses. Two decades of war, and the consequent economic downturn, had dried up the flow of wealth, and the city had lost one third of its business. The administrative functions for the region, under a civilian deputy of the Fuhrer, had moved into a former palatial house that had been seized by the government after its owner had declared bankruptcy. Bedrooms had been converted into offices, by the simple expediency of exchanging moldering four-poster beds for desks and chairs, and the ballroom had been converted into a huge canteen, the ceiling still decorated in a pastel-coloured fantasia of cherubs and plump deities frolicking among clouds. Paint and gilding flaked off regularly, and fluttered to land in the unimpressed soldiers' rations.

Mustang was assigned a suite of offices in what had once been the ladies' quarters – he decided not to interpret this as a slight, and set about having the pink damask walls stripped and repainted utilitarian white – with an office for himself in the centre, flanked by a larger staff office, where a parlour and boudoir had been knocked together, and a gaudy marble bathroom converted to a small canteen. The windows were huge and draughty. The floors, once stripped of plush, dusty carpets, were polished wood in decent condition, and the walls were pleasingly thick and solid. His view looked out over what had once been ornamental gardens, now bulldozed into a parade-ground, and from there down the slopes of the hills to the city itself.

He had met his civilian boss, Governor Walter Bruhns, once for a briefing, at which the small, bad-tempered man had made it clear that he did not approve of sharing office space with a military unit – Roy and his staff were to have responsibility for a squadron of a hundred and twenty infantrymen, which Bruhns interpreted as a hundred and twenty more idle mouths to feed – and that his own police and guard could do a fine job of defending and administering the western outpost. Mustang knew better than to disagree, but told the man directly that he was just following orders, and that any complaints should be directed to the office of the Fuhrer. Bruhns was even less thrilled that the new CO was a State Alchemist, with a reputation for massive destruction and huge loss of life. He instructed the captain to keep his recruitment and training responsibilities in this department to a minimum, to focus instead on the paltry amount of work assigned him as assistant to the Governor, and to be advised that there would be a zero-tolerance policy towards any burned or destroyed property.

Roy considered this warning unnecessary; what could possibly go so far wrong in a regional administrative brief that it required fire to be brought in? If there was one advantage to this achingly-boring posting, that was it; he would never again have to execute a captive enemy, attempted deserter or treason by fire.

So he settled in, and began to profile the staff he would need. First to identify was a right-hand man; he wanted an old NCO, nearing the end of his career and in search of a cushy office job in the country. A hard-bitten old Sergeant Major who would be unfazed by anything that this posting could bring, and who could advise Mustang on management of his staff and his squadron. That would be his Lieutenant.

Then, he needed somebody with street-smarts, a local boy perhaps. Somebody junior, but competent, with connections to interests in the city, both legal and less-legal.

Another would be a tactician, perhaps a wartime recruit from the civilian sector, a little older and experienced in politics. Somebody who could decode the dense civil service jargon, and identify connections invisible to Army eyes.

After that, the team needed a brain. Radio and encryption technologies were developing quickly, and – as he had spent the past seven years far from civilisation – the march of progress had largely left Roy behind. He wanted somebody plugged in to all that, so that he could use it to his advantage.

Finally, they would need a foot-soldier. In the bluntest possible terms, a pawn who could be traded for intelligence, or used to draw out a threat, if it came to it. This would need to be somebody with strong personal loyalty, a young recruit, perhaps.

From his new office phone, he dialled the operator, and asked to be put through to Central 153 – Hughes' line. Surely he would be at home in the evening. The phone was answered within four rings, and his friend's voice came through, cracked and tinny, from hundreds of miles away.

"Roy, my boy! How are you settling in? Have you been to the spa baths yet?"

"No. They stink of sulphur. I want to talk to you about my staff. I know what I need, but I don't know who they are yet."

His friend turned businesslike in an instant.

"Okay, give me what you've got."

Roy ran through the list, sharing everything with the intelligence man, secure in the knowledge that he would protect this information.

"Riiiiight…" he said, considering, "I can definitely help you with the Comms operator. There's a kid who served in HQ during the last three years of the war, he wasn't fit to be sent to the front line, suffers from asthma or something such. But when it comes to technology, he's a genuine wunderkind, and he's been overlooked for promotion in repeated rounds. He'll leap at the chance. Private Kain Fuery. You can request him by writing to Major Kye Golding in Logistics."

"Thanks. Anyone else?"

"Hmm… for your tactician, you could do a damned sight worse than Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda. He was in the War Office for almost the entire first and second Iqbal campaigns, as a strategic advisor. Since the war ended, he was bumped all the way down to Military Police, guarding some godawful outpost near Dublith. He's bored, he's resentful, and he'll take the offer of unofficial strategic advisor to the Western Governor's office in a hot minute."

"Excellent. I'll have to enquire locally for my local boy. The foot soldier shouldn't be hard to find locally either; I'll just pull up a keen kid from my squadron. What about the NCO?"

"I'll have a look, leave it with me. Should be plenty of the old boys kicking about."

"That's what I thought. How's married life?"

He could almost hear the man beaming down the receiver.

"Heavenly! She's a great kid, Mustang. She can dance, she can entertain company, she knows how to run a household, she can bake, she speaks three languages, she keeps the accounts for the kitchen…"

He lifted the phone away from his ear, and waited for his Hughes' ecstatic raving to tail off. He was drawn back into the monologue by a question addressed at him.

"What was that?"

"Bad line. I asked when you're going to get married! You're only a year younger than I am, and my mother said I'd left it late. Another three years and you'll be thirty! At the very least, you should be seeing somebody, with a view to engagement."

"I'm really not the marrying type, Hughes. Thank you for your concern, but if you try to set me up with a friend of Gracia's, or a single cousin of yours, or anybody except the NCO I've asked for, I will kill you in your sleep."

"Huh. Fair enough. But I should tell you that I'm going to hang up in a moment, because I've got a beautiful home-cooked, three-course meal waiting for me in the dining room, followed by a few hands of bridge and maybe some light canoodling with my lady love. What do you have planned for this evening? A tin of beans and a single mattress? Get on board the marriage train, my friend!"

Mustang rolled his eyes, and hung up the phone.

The following day, and long before Hughes could respond to him about the NCO, a member of the guard knocked on his office door, and announced that he had a visitor. Irritated to have been interrupted while writing a letter to obtain Private Feury, he frowned at the Second Lieutenant who strode through the door, and saluted.

A girl. A familiar girl. He tried to place her. Willowy build. Light hair neatly pinned back. Bright green eyes in a desert-tanned face. Expression like a pool of clear water. Hawkeye.

"Sir. Forgive the intrusion." She spoke first. Cocky.

"It's fine. At ease."

He gestured to a chair on the other side of his desk. She removed her cap and sat down, studying his face with an intensity he thought almost insubordinate.

"I wanted to speak with you," he began, surprising her, "I was sorry to hear about the death of your father last year. I'm sure you know that he endowed his property and assets to me. I want to rectify this. I want you to have it all."

She shook her head, with a smile.

"That's kind of you, sir. But I wouldn't go against my father's wishes. I don't need a house, or money, I make enough to support myself. His alchemical materials are worthless to me, and rightly belong to the one who inherited his title."

"I see. Here's what I'm going to do. I'll transfer the books and writings to my own property, have the house cleaned up and let out at a reduced rate to a returning veteran and his family. The proceeds, minus what is required for maintenance of the house, will go to a savings account. If you ever change your mind, the house and the contents of that account are yours. If not, they will both pass to the ownership of the tenant in twenty years."

She nodded her thanks.

"Now what did you come to see me for?" he asked.

She hesitated, anxiety and determination in conflict.

"I have information for you. It's somewhat sensitive."

"We're secure here. I've checked the office for taps, and the walls are thick. We can't be overheard."

"Close the curtains, please."

Puzzled, he did so. She walked around the desk to stand before him, and he stood to look her in the eye.

"You may be aware that my father's life work was to produce a perennial energy source, to replace coal and gas, and reduce the health risks and high mortality rate for miners and boilermen. He experimented with creating a plasma – an electron flame – that would radiate energy without consuming matter. Even I know enough about the principle of Equivalent Exchange to appreciate that this is impossible. Energy can't come from nothing, it can neither be created nor destroyed."

Mustang nodded, impressed and intrigued, and gestured the girl to continue.

"Obviously, he was unsuccessful. But he managed to create a controlled plasma, which he called luminiferous aether, under experimental conditions, sustaining it by accessing energy stored in the bonds within the hydrogen atoms in the air. He found that each of these atoms, individually holding very low energy, produced a phenomenal amount of energy when split. And there was virtually no bi-product. I believe the pan-spectrum radiant energy produced damaged his body, and contributed to his early death. The housekeeper reported that his hair and teeth fell out, and his skin was badly blistered. He suffered massive organ failure, and effectively drowned from the inside. These are symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning."

"Wait. How do you know about radiation poisoning?"

"It was described in the translated Treatise on the Nature of Matter, an Iqbalan alchemical text, on the properties of refined pitchblende ore."

"Right," he remembered now, glancing through the book, one of hundreds consumed during his study, "So I assume that the formula is included in your father's writings?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"No. In plain speaking. Is it, or isn't it? This is important, because if this formula got into the wrong hands…"

"That's why I'm here. I believe you will be able to use this responsibly, and then help me to dispose of the record."

To his further astonishment, she began to unbutton her overshirt. He stepped back around the desk, averting his eyes. When he looked up, she sat on the edge of the desk, her naked back toward him. The skin was white, the tan covering her arms, neck and face only, where her torso had been covered by the standard-issue vest. The skin was emblazoned, from shoulder to shoulder, and hip to hip, with an intensely detailed alchemical circle. He came in closer again, reading the lines with his finger-tip. The design was inked in black, the skin slightly raised and scarred. This had not been tattooed, it had been burned.

He was momentarily speechless, as he interpreted the symbols, and considered the feasibility of the formula.

"He used this successfully?"

"Yes. I left home so that he couldn't use this design, as he had originally intended. Unfortunately, he had another copy on paper, which was destroyed in the heat of the flame produced. But to my knowledge, this is the only remaining version."

"This is extraordinary… It's an energy source, certainly, but it could also be a powerful weapon."

"That's what I'm afraid of. I want you to burn it."

He looked up from the design, at the back of the woman's head. Her voice was steady, and she did not shake.

"I can't do that without burning the skin," he clarified.

"I know," still calm, without a trace of fear.

"I'm not going to maim you, Lieutenant."

She turned to face him, and he kept his eyes fixed on her face, to avoid taking in her bare breasts. She appeared entirely committed.

"I can do it by myself using oil and matches, but there is a much greater risk that I'll die in doing so. You can control the flame, to ensure that it only burns the skin, and leaves my spine and organs intact."

"No. I can't control it so precisely. Do you have any idea how much pain this will cause you?"

"I can guess,"

Still so calm. How was she so infernally calm?

He sighed.

"Who else knows about this?"

"Nobody."

"You've managed front-line fighting in a mixed platoon for four years without anybody seeing your back?"

"Yes, I'm confident."

He looked skeptical.

"Well, I'm not going to burn it off for you just yet. I'll put in some research into how I can do it safely, but in the meantime, you mustn't do anything rash."

She pulled up her vest, and the shirt over her shoulders, and began to button it again.

"I don't act rashly, sir. I have considered this."

"Very well, then it's out of my hands. If you want to get rid of it, then by all means set yourself alight."

She stood again, facing him without a hint of deference.

"I want to volunteer for your staff. I hold the rank of Second Lieutenant, and I have been offered promotion straight to Captain if I will join Van Aalten's Iqbal cleanup mission. Let me join you, and I'll settle for Lieutenant."

"I don't need a Lieutenant, I already have someone in mind," he was irked to have been asked so blatantly, especially by a young woman. She was not remotely disturbed by his rising temper.

"I am an excellent marksman, I have sound tactical knowledge, and I know how to manage a staff. I have experience of leading a platoon, when my CO was killed in action and we were without reinforcement for six months. I also know people in the State Alchemists through my father, and I can assist with your correspondence."

"I'm not interested."

"Why not?"

Now he really was angry, considering that 'No' should have been the end of the conversation. She should have given up and left. Why was she still here, wasting his time?

"Do you want to make me a laughing stock? How will it look if the SiC to the Provincial Governor's squadron is a girl barely out of adolescence? You'll make me look weak. People will think I've recruited you to a top post because you're pretty."

This surprised her somewhat. But she quickly recovered.

"You can use that to your advantage. If people think you're slightly seedy, they won't keep as close an eye on whatever else it is that you're doing."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he wondered briefly if she was an agent of Major General Armstrong's, and he was making a terrible mistake.

"It means that I will be an asset to your office. People underestimate me all the time, which gives me immense leverage. You can take advantage of that, or you can make the same assumption as everybody else, and you'll lose."

"Get out of my office!"

She paused for a moment, considering whether to say anything further, and then thought better of it. She saluted, turned and opened the door, closing it gently behind her. Perfectly controlled.

Mustang paced, then sat at his desk to complete his letter, then cursed loudly, paced the room again, and picked up the phone. A timid, well-spoken woman answered the phone, on behalf of the Hughes' household. From her, Mustang obtained Maes' office number, and then rang up.

"This is Captain Hughes, Intel."

"Hughes, Mustang. I need to know where Hawkeye's currently placed."

"Oh, hey Roy. In a box, six feet under, I gather."

"Not the old man, idiot. The girl."

"Ah, I believe she's on leave. Her most recent posting ended a month ago, and she's under requisition by Van Aalten in 1st Battalion, 7th Infantry Brigade. They march for Iqbal in two weeks."

"Get her for me, Maes."

"Are you nuts? It's bad protocol to poach somebody else's man, especially when they're going to need all the sharp-shooters they can get!"

"I can't explain right now. I'm coming up to Central next week for a State Alchemists briefing and a hearing by the resourcing panel at HQ. I'll catch you up then."

"Great! You can come round for dinner."

"Sure. Ring me when you've got her."

He hung up, abruptly, and scribbled the last of his letter. Then drafted another, requesting the service of Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda. These he sealed, and left these in a tray for his secretary to post. He rose to his feet, donned his coat, and headed into town to find a trouble-maker.


	7. Intrigue

Nine hours on a stuffy, jolting steam-train, and, as far as Mustang was concerned, it might well have been nine years. Even ensconced in a relatively comfortable seat in the second class, the constant swaying motion, the terrific thunder of the engine and the wheels on the iron tracks, and the smell of his fellow passengers' cigarettes and perfumes and lunches and pomade and sour sweat combined to give the sleep-deprived captain a headache and an impatience to be outside in the questionably fresh air of Central City.

Getting up at four in the morning was not unusual – the war had included many night raids by one side or the other, besides watch duty, and up until very recently, he had scarcely had an uninterrupted night's sleep for years – but spending a day bored and cooped up in a hot wooden box was taxing. Why on earth had he been posted at the opposite end of the country from HQ?

Most of the territory through which the railway passed was given over to agriculture; fields of wheat, potatoes, pastures for cattle, ploughed, grazed or scythed to stubble. All the land had been farmed to exhaustion, as had the country. Every province, every town, every citizen, had given everything to get through this war. Victory had been declared, but what did that mean to the survivors? Slightly less than to the mothers whose sons would never come home, and young women widowed before they were married, the fields laid to fallow.

This, the Fuhrer's rhetoric had not taken into account - the country that he now ruled was brought to its knees. He asked for total dedication, the land had given it, and now had nothing more to give. The men and women had given their strength, their health and their youth, and the state could not afford their pensions. Towns were run to ruin, their wealth given entirely to the war effort.

As he did every day, Mustang looked down at his hands, clad in white gloves, and wished that he could erase the past seven years of his life, or begin again somehow. He felt a hundred years old.

At last, the train crossed the brown sluggish river Ebro, and dragged through the suburbs, then the slums, then the grimy industrial district of Central City. Two in the afternoon, and the streets around the railway station were busy. This, Mustang found difficult to adapt to. People, just walking around.

Buying vegetables, carrying packages, pushing perambulators with chattering babies, sitting on benches, eating hot chestnuts, busy and idle and occupied with their own lives. Luxuriating in safety and mundane cares. Now he knew he was in a different world.

The briefing was tedious and predictable. A phone-call or even a letter would have sufficed, rather than dragging him hundreds of miles to hear about the massive budget cuts, the frozen salaries, the uncertainty that a third war was not imminent. His resource allocation was pitiful, a token amount, denoting the low risk that the Fuhrer clearly believed the Western provinces to present to his rule, and by extension, the stability of the nation. The army was barely necessary for this task, and Roy got the sense that they were being not so much deployed as held there in reserve, ready to march in case of further disturbance to the south.

Then on to the college of the State Alchemists. Even now, he felt a warm afterglow of the reverence and pride that had once overwhelmed him as he had walked among these grand old buildings, as a much younger man. To belong to an institution such as this was, in his mind, justification for signing away his adolescence to lecture halls and libraries and an intractable master. That was before the war, at any rate.

With half an hour to kill before meeting the Dean, he headed for one of the newer blocks, put up during the first war to house alchemists-turned-officers. Many of the names over the pigeon-holes were familiar, some he knew to be dead. A haphazard pile of letters suggested that Armstrong had not been back to his quarters for some time. Kimble's name had been unceremoniously removed, and not yet replaced. Where his own name had once been was now a blank space; the porter would forward his mail to Ausburg. Or perhaps he wouldn't.

The Dean's office was where it had always been, at the top of the administrative block; a large crescent-shaped window looked out over the quadrangle, and between the walls was cramped with dusty oak furniture that might have been there since the college was built five centuries ago. The ceiling was painted dark blue, with a constellation map picked out in silver, but furred and dimmed by years of dust and lamp-soot and pipe-smoke. Roy remembered the gentle old man being quiet, sincere and knowledgeable about alchemy and also statecraft. Like so many others, the war seemed to have aged him by twenty, rather than seven years, and his eyes were practically blind.

He stood at the door, the Dean's secretary introduced him, and then leftU the room.

"Do please be seated, Mustang," the man gestured at a hard wooden seat by the empty hearth.

"Thank you, sir."

The Dean settled himself into a chair facing the younger man, and lifted his spectacles from his chest to his face, the better to see him.

"I was pleased to hear that you had made it through the war without getting yourself killed like so many, or going spectacularly mad like others. You look well, under the circumstances."

"Yes, sir."

"And they've sent you out west to drink beer and lounge around in the hot-springs, eh? Ha! I had some good times in Ausburg when I was a student!"

Mustang smiled. Was the old man perhaps slightly senile? Or was it his own greater age and experience that allowed them to speak together, almost as equals?

"It's a pleasant posting, sir. But I don't see what good I can be to the college out there."

"Funny you should mention it, Mustang. I've been giving this some thought, and on speculation, I commissioned one of my undergraduates to travel around a bit and gather some intelligence. What the college needs right now, more than anything else, is recruits. Thanks to the weaponisation programme, we suffered disproportionately from fatalities during the war; almost half the college was deployed at some stage or another, and two-thirds of those who went out never made it back. We are depleted, and barely have enough teaching staff to continue in our function as a college, let alone carry out research. And our research is needed now more than ever, if the state is to recover from this debacle. Which brings me back to my roving undergraduate. About two-hundred miles to the south-west of Ausburg, he picked up the trail of an alchemist whose name will be familiar to you, I'm sure; van Hohenheim. It seems he was seen around there ten to twelve years ago. A little further digging revealed that he had, during that time, fathered at least two sons. The boys show signs of unusual talents, transmuting matter into different shapes, largely for their own amusement. Their pedigree is remarkable, Mustang. This van Hohenheim has been known to the college for some time, and we have never heard of him having produced any children. You will be ideally placed to keep an eye on these boys, and to recruit them when they come of age."

The captain nodded slowly. Recruitment was not his area of expertise, but the opportunity to manage two innate alchemists was tempting.

"There is a slight complication, however. The boys have recently been in contact with an old friend of yours; then Izumi Haru, now Izumi Curtis. She has taken up residence in the north, Dublith, I believe, and has married an Amestrian man. As a result, we cannot deport her, and the statute of limitations on her previous criminal activities has passed, so we cannot imprison her on any legitimate grounds."

"That doesn't necessarily mean that the boys will be hostile to the State Alchemists," Roy said, after a moment's thought, "Only that we'll have to approach them separately, and with an emphatically non-military offer. I'll get on their trail, and figure out what they want."

The old man now smiled, somewhat bitterly;

"I knew you would understand, Mustang. I have always thought you have a good head for tactics."

They spoke a while longer, reminiscing about the past, while skirting carefully around the issue of the war. Small hints in the Dean's speech led Mustang to thing that he was not enamoured of Bradley's power-grab, or the new dictatorial governance of the previously republican state. But, out of respect for the old man's politically precarious situation, he did not disclose the plot into which he had entered with Major General Armstrong. Ultimately, he didn't need to. As he rose to leave, the old man shook his hand, and then pulled him close to whisper in his ear;

"I've heard you've become embroiled in the intrigues of the Armstrong family. Olivia and Marie Armstrong, in particular, seem to have developed a strong interest in you."

Careful, he thought.

"Yes, sir. I had a conversation with the Major General before her departure for Fort Briggs, and I have a standing appointment with Miss Armstrong. I'll be meeting her for lunch tomorrow, and I'll pass on your regards."

"You're a lucky man," the Dean did not seem pleased to admit it, "I hope that stays with you. For gods sake, get some good men on your side. The women of the Armstrong family are not sentimental; they will chew you up and spit you out."

Roy raised his eyebrows.

"That sounds like the voice of experience, sir?"

"Ah, well. In my youth, I was briefly courting Honoria Armstrong. Needless to say, she married Karl Albrecht Scherzinger, and I married my books and my college."

"Ouch. I'll be careful. As far as I know, it's just a dalliance. I know my place."

They parted on good terms, and Mustang opted to walk across town in the cooling rain, rather than hail a cab to get to the Hughes household for dinner. The house was small and neat, in a good neighbourhood, and boxes of blooming geraniums grew under the street-facing windows. The housekeeper answered the door, and admitted him straight to the parlour, where sat a slender, sweet-faced girl of twenty-three, dressed in baby-blue, with a ribbon in her hair. She rose to her feet, and kissed him on both cheeks with a bright smile.

"Captain Roy Mustang, I'm delighted to finally meet you. Maes will be home imminently, he has unfortunately been delayed at the office," she rolled her eyes at him, still smiling, "This is a fairly common occurrence. He asked me to convey his apologies, and to ensure that you are made comfortable."

"Mrs Hughes, thank you for inviting me into your home. You are too kind."

"Please do call me Gracia. I'll have Heidi show you to your room so that you can change into some dry clothing. The porter brought your luggage round this afternoon, and it's all waiting for you. I will also change for dinner, and hopefully by then my office-bound husband and our guest will have materialised."

The housekeeper led him up two flights of stairs to the attic bedroom, where his trunk had been deposited. He changed from his day uniform into a dinner suit, and combed the greasy city rainwater out of his hair. The room, like the rest of the house, was cozy, slightly in need of renovation, but carefully kept. A china vase of fragrant lilies brightened the dressing table. How his friend had been domesticated!

While changing, he heard the door opening downstairs, and Hughes' voice, indistinct through two

floors. Then footsteps thundering up the stairs, and his bedroom door flew open.

"Good evening, old boy! You look almost presentable!" his friend was also damp from the rain, but his smile was warm, "I'm glad you and your luggage found your way alright. We can talk business later, but I wanted to let you know so that you are forewarned. Earlier today, I learned that the Hawkeye girl was in town, having been recalled from the south, as per your requisition. So I took the liberty of inviting her for dinner. Don't make a scene, there's a good chap."

Mustang shrugged.

"Why would I make a scene? You can dine with whoever you like."

His friend winked, and ducked back around the door. Mustang followed him downstairs, and back

into the parlour. Gracia had changed into a green velvet gown, and opposite her sat his Lieutenant, in a simple black evening gown. Doubtless, a sign of respect for her father. Introductions being redundant, they launched straight into conversation.

The evening started promisingly enough; a cocktail of gin with mint and violet essence, a beef consommé, quail stuffed with nuts and raisins, paired with white wine, veal escalopes with root vegetables braised in port, paired with red wine, a light pudding of cream and raspberries, followed by brandy and cigars for the two men, tea for the ladies. Around the main course, Hughes observed that his wife had engaged Hawkeye deeply in conversation about a literary journal to which they both subscribed - effectively, catching her up on four years of missed issues - and turned his conversation with Mustang to work gossip. He grinned as he reported;

"We had two privates returned from Briggs this week. Apparently, they had gone a little mad, poor devils. Thrashing about and screaming that there was some sort of spectre or demon loose in the fortress. They'd been found like that, hiding in a snow-bank, six hours after having failed to report in from guard detail. Serious hypothermia, and the like, but mostly they were just… hysterical."

Roy was only vaguely interested;

"There must be quite a lot of undiagnosed cases of shell-shock in returning soldiers. Perhaps the darkness and cold were just too much for them, and they snapped."

"Or perhaps it's Armstrong's reign of terror!" Maes was amused by the idea, "She's only been up there two weeks, and already the men are feigning madness to get reassigned!"

"I don't think anyone in their right mind would choose to be sent to Briggs. Never mind the bears and wolves in the mountains, the Drachmans run up and hurl fireballs and improvised explosive devices at them, pretty much every month. And it's miles away from the nearest civilisation. No cozy suppers like this one, I'll wager."

"That's the truth. Armstrong will keep them on bread-crusts and water. Her brother mentioned offhand that she only eats once a day, and regularly fasts, just so her body can deal without food. She'll outlive us all. So what's the gossip from the college?"

"No official statement on Kimble, so I guess there won't be an inquiry. They'll just bury it."

His friend shuddered.

"Crazy wretch."

"That was pretty much the Dean's diagnosis. Put it down to combat stress. Tucker passed his examinations, at long last. You remember, that funny pale kid who vomited on his rifle when that body came floating down the river at Pesaro? He's been at it for a while, but he's finally made it. He's putting together a proposal for research funding to resume work on chimeras."

"What's the strategic value of chimeras?" Hughes was sceptical, "Haven't they been down that blind alley already?"

"We know more now than we did then. It's possible that it's safe to try it again. And the strategic value is pretty obvious, when you think about it. There are diseases that affect humans but not animals. It's possible that you could even use them to grow organs or blood for human transplants. From a military perspective, imagine sentient hawks that could reconnoitre a battle-ground, or intelligent rats that could carry small quantities of explosives into enemy-held territory, or convey messages to allies."

"It sounds dicey to me."

He wondered about sharing his assignment with his friend, and decided to sit on it for a while longer. How impressed would Hughes be about a babysitting detail?

After the meal, they moved to the drawing room, where Hughes tried to ply them with port, and Mustang found himself sat opposite his Lieutenant.

"It's very kind of your friends to have invited me for dinner," she offered, as the conversation lulled, "I haven't had such a magnificent meal for years."

"Quite. One forgets what real food tastes like," he failed to keep the bitterness from his voice, his temperature rising with the richness of the meal and port.

"What brings you to Central?" she tried again.

"I was summoned to meet the resourcing panel about my new posting. The wages aren't going to be as good as they were in the field. And most of the duties will be administrative. Lieutenant Hawkeye - blast it! What is your name?"

"Riza."

"Right. Riza, why do you want to be on my staff?"

She gave him a long look, and then asked;

"May I speak frankly?"

He glanced at the back of Maes, hunched over the card table, cackling with laughter, and Gracia's radiant face as she pencilled in her score.

"Please. Although, if your answer displeases me, I will stop you."

She replied directly, and spoke steadily.

"Fine. I'm sure you know that I was also posted at the Iqbal front-line for four years. I carried out my basic training in the field, and I was immediately recruited to the sharp-shooters. We covered most of the infantry's manoeuvres. I knew of you by reputation through my father, and other contacts in the college, so I looked out for you when our platoons were involved in the same action. I watched you, where you went on the battlefield or in covert strikes."

She took a breath, and glanced at him before continuing. Her voice was crisp and cool, and her eyes were clear, in spite of the emotionally-loaded subject.

"The sharp-shooters had a difficult time of it. We never saw our kills up close, and for the most part, they died without knowing what hit them. Men would be overcome by guilt and remorse, or even just fatigue in the face of the pointless nature of the conflict. That was what caused them to turn their weapons on their feet or legs to be sent home, or on their heads to die quickly. I was very young, and, looking back, quite naive, but even I struggled to see the point of it all sometimes. Then, quite by coincidence, I found that I had saved your life, by taking out a foot-soldier who was advancing on your position. I felt that I had done something worthwhile. I didn't believe in the conflict, or in the mission, or in the chain of command, but I believed that whatever you did, it was a good man who did it."

She fixed him with her eyes. He wondered where this had come from. They had never met. Was she able to see something that he, and the rest of the world, was unable to? Or was she projecting on him her own need for a good and moral man?

"It was a game at first," she continued, still perfectly factual, "I'd watch out for you when I knew you were close, keep you safe, clear your path, watch over you until you got home. It kept me present, engaged in the mission, purposeful. As long as you were alive, at least I had done something right. When the conflict ended, and I learned that you were still alive, I felt that I had been given an opportunity to continue my self-appointed mission. The last thing I want to do is to go back to Iqbal and round up and kill the stragglers and the refugees, those too stubborn or too incapacitated to leave the contested zone. Nor did I want to be seconded to a guard post under a CO who celebrated the outcome. I still have no faith in the chain of command, or the state, or even the Fuhrer. I have faith in you. Does that answer your question inoffensively?"

She asked this last question with a slight smile, teasing. He was utterly surprised by her honesty, naked, jewel-bright, and her total lack of self-interest. What creature was this that, never having met him, would risk her life and her career to protect him? This was insanity, pure folly. She would discover the truth soon, that he was petty, selfish, dishonest, embittered.

The sound of a throat clearing behind him. Hughes, standing over his shoulder. He had been staring at the girl's implacable face, those ocean eyes, for some time.

"Miss Hawkeye, perhaps you would entertain my wife for a hand or two of Hearts while I catch up with my old friend?"

She stood with a smile.

"With pleasure, Captain Hughes."

He resumed her empty chair, and his friend glared at him. With a smile, he asked lightly;

"Are you out of your mind?"

"What?"

"You're going the right way to get court-martialled. Worse, your men will lose faith in you. For the love of god, man. Do not fuck your subordinates!"

The last injunction was delivered in an urgent whisper. Mustang was again surprised.

"I don't intend to! What are you driving at, Hughes?"

"Come off it, old boy. That poor child is clearly infatuated with you, and you give her all encouragement. Had I known, I would not have requisitioned her for you. This is irresponsible to the highest degree."

He resented the reprimand, and shot back;

"I had no idea, Hughes. This is the second time we've spoken, and I repeat that I have no intention of becoming involved with her. What kind of man do you think I am? I can't deny that it's useful if she has some personal feeling towards me, it will keep her loyal, and increase her dedication to her work. But no pretty eyes are worth committing professional suicide!"

"I'm glad we agree. Roy, I apologise, it's just that I know that you can be impulsive and damnably contrarian in nature. I wish you'd do yourself and this girl a favour and send her back to the infantry. I'll find you another Lieutenant, somebody equally loyal and talented."

"No dice, Hughes. She's convinced me. It's definitely better to have this kind of officer as an ally than an enemy. Besides, as she herself pointed out, if people think I'm the kind of guy to recruit a pretty young Lieutenant as an unofficial secretary, they'll underestimate me in other ways."

His friend sighed, resigned.

"I hope you know what you're doing."

"Hey, I learned by watching you. Now why don't we play a doubles game? I'm still just about sober enough for a hand of Bridge, and I perceive that your charming wife is something of a card-sharp."

They rejoined the table, and a game went underway. An hour later, Hawkeye departed, and the dinner part ended. She was to take a train later that week to Ausburg, and Mustang was relieved that they would not spend the nine-hour journey close to one another.

The following morning, he spent in a haze. Having ordered his luggage to be sent to the station, he dressed in his finest civilian clothes - a much-pressed linen shirt, navy trousers too large for his war-starved frame, fine waistcoat and collar from his long-ago graduation, and a second-hand woollen great-coat - and set out through the sodden streets. His destination was the restaurant of an excellent hotel, where his coat and hat were taken by a footman dressed more grandly than himself. He raked his fingers through his black hair to make it sit straight, and allowed himself to be shown to his table. There, Marie poised on her seat, relaxed and insouciant, in a blue-grey day dress that probably cost more than his entire ensemble brand-new. Her golden hair was softly curled and pinned back, and her face flawless.

"Captain Mustang," she rose to her feet, and offered her cheek for a kiss, "I'm so pleased that you could join me."

Her eyes flitted about, making sure that they were observed by the bored semi-aristocratic gossips who occupied the nearby tables. Then she offered him a satisfied smile and a wink. He felt, if anything, more uncomfortable and self-conscious, which he covered with a taciturn frown.

"Miss Armstrong, delighted as I am to see you again, I must inform you that my train for Ausberg departs in under two hours, and I may have to leave you abruptly."

"Oh! We'll see to that!" she laughed, airily, "I won't give up my favourite dining companion for anything so common as public transport! Tell me, how have you enjoyed your stay in Central? What is it like to return after such a long time abroad?"

He was briefly spared answering by the return of the waiter, bringing an unasked-for glass of red wine, which he drank in two quick gulps. What could be said? The city was laconic, decadent, stumbling along without purpose, dazed by a decade of war and total change of leadership, beaten down by oppressive war-taxes and hateful rhetoric?

"I have enjoyed my stay, ma'am. It has been enlightening. I find the city quite different, but no less civilised, I'm sure."

To his surprise, she smiled at his answer.

"I am glad, Captain, I am glad! And you are to be stationed at Ausberg, I understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That is rather remote," she said, reproachfully, "If we didn't have the railways, I don't know what we should do!"

Her transformation from satirical to apparently vacuous was difficult to follow. Mustang could only nod, and add;

"Each of our borders must be defended, ma'am. Including the north, as your family will do so capably."

Nothing could shake her composure.

"I am so glad that our best and brightest are able to be dispatched to where they are needed. My sister is well-suited to her commission, and she will do an excellent job, as I am sure you will."

The courses, and the conversation, followed on in accordance with formulae. Marie was charming, full of pleasantries and the occasional insight, until the end of the meal. As she paid, she invited Mustang to follow her to a suite that her family reserved upstairs. Although his train was minutes away from departure, he knew better than to disagree, and followed the slight form of Miss Armstrong out of the restaurant and upstairs, conscious that he was pursued by many eyes.

Once inside the suite, the girl was all business. She poured two measures of whiskey into two glasses, and motioned him to a comfortable seat, in front of which she knelt on the plush carpet.

"I have news for you from my sister," she stated, matter-of-factly, "you needn't worry about being overheard, this room is quite secure."

As she spoke, he was alarmed that she unpinned her hair, extracting a bright pink ribbon from among its tresses and letting it float to the floor.

"She has consolidated her position, and ensured that the men about her are those that she - and by extension you - can trust. She has recruited them to her mission, and hopes for success before the next year is out."

He averted his eyes as she reached to her ankles and untied her pink silk boots, and kicked them aside.

"She offers you the following words of advice," at this, she reached into the cleavage of her dress, and extracted a much-folded strip of paper; "'Build your team wisely. You are an intuitive leader, you will not struggle to identify and recruit the right men, taking into account their skills, experiences and motives.'"

Marie smiled and nodded, shaking her golden curls over her shoulders;

"Ah, now. Let me see. She recommends that you 'run your unit as a team of teams. Men in groups will form cliques. Allow them to do so. Only ensure that you have a man on the inside to report back to you the pulse of the organism.'"

She paused to raise herself on her knees and untie her gown behind her back, allowing it to slip to below her corseted waist.

"Additionally, 'you will have recruited a team of specialists. Encourage them to be protective of their specialism, and generous with their information. All data must be shared with all, to the benefit of all. Your strategic arm must know what your operational arm is doing, and vice-versa. Insist that these channels of communication should be open.'"

Mustang took in these words, even as he watched Marie reach her arms behind her back to unfasten her own corset lacings with a happy sigh. Shaking herself out of these garments, and raising herself to her feet to walk around the room in only her stockings, she continued;

"'There will be many languages spoken in the office. You and your Lieutenant - Hawkeye, unless my sources deceive me - will be fluent in the practical, abbreviated dialect of the front line. Your tactician, Breda, will speak in the language of the bureaucrats, which is calculated to please, rather than to inform. Your technologist will communicate in jargon. Your job is to encourage him to convey what his machines convey, rather than what they do. Plain language is the aim. Make them speak in the same language, regardless of the information that they have to convey. The finest intelligence is useless if they don't understand one another, or if you don't understand them.'"

Armstrong halted, as her sister's letter was complete, and glanced at Mustang to ensure that he had understood. His eyes were fixed on her, and he roused himself to nod.

"Please, um… please thank your sister, ma'am, for these insights. Tell her that I am grateful for her experience."

Marie smiled, and settled herself on his lap, one leg on either side of his own, and slipped the paper into his pocket. Then her hands reached to his waistcoat and shirt, unfastening the buttons without invitation, down to his waist.

"I'm sure you will be able to thank her yourself at some point, Captain."

He drew breath carefully, not wishing to offend his hostess, nor to convey his enthusiasm too strongly. She slipped his shirt over his shoulders, moving his braces aside, and bringing her face alongside his so that she could whisper in his ear.

"Of course, anything you want to convey to her, you can always give to me. And I will carry the message on."

Her lips grazed his at the end of the sentence, and the temptation was too great to ignore. He met her with a kiss, and wrapped his arms around her waist, slipping his hands to her rear as she hastened to remove his clothes. For a young woman, she was experienced and authoritative, generous and unabashed with her body. Mustang couldn't remember when he had last had such total self-forgetfulness, folding into her arms, allowing her to do as she wished with him.

Afterwards, he slept better than he had for years. When he woke, he was alone, but his clothing was folded neatly on the end of the bed, and he discovered a ticket for the night train - complete with sleeper carriage - in his coat pocket. A paid-for cab awaited him downstairs, and he travelled easily from the hotel to the station, then from the station to Ausberg, falling asleep in his berth as soon as the train set off. The scent of perfume clung to his skin and hair, and he fingered the slip of paper that comprised Marie's transcript of her sister's instructions, half enjoying its lingering traces of intimacy, half afraid that it should be stolen.


	8. Coming to Land

Water ran down the inside of the walls into the smaller of two bedrooms in the Elrics' farmhouse, and seeped through the ceiling to drip onto pots, pans and bowls laid out across the kitchen floor. Still, the rain fell heavy outside, and a blustering wind whipped the trees and slammed the shutters.

A skinny, fair-haired boy watched with concern from the centre of the damp bedroom, as a girl in overalls passed a rope around his waist, between his legs, over his shoulders, across his back. Securing it with a deft series of knots, she asked;

"Are you sure about this, Ed? You could wait until the storm has died down a little, you know."

He gestured to the affected wall, down which grimy white water ran, carrying the lime and mortar away with it, exposing the stones beneath.

"I can't take the chance that the wall will crumble and the roof come down. Anyway, you won't let me plummet to my death."

"Some days more than others," the girl muttered, leaning out of the open window to feed the rope through a set of pulleys, and dropped the long end to the ground. She strapped around his waist a broad leather belt with a hammer, nails and a saw.

"You don't want the solder for the lead?" she tried again.

"Nope. I can do this."

"Wait for my signal, then lean carefully out to test the tension. If you fall too far, it's going to be difficult for Al and me to heave you back up again. You're short, but you're dense."

He gestured with the hammer, as though to take it to her head, but she was already hurrying through the door, pulling up the hood of her oversized raincoat - a hand-me-down from her mother - and running out into the streaming wet, sliding in the mud as she rounded the house. A smaller, wide-eyed boy joined her from the chicken coop, struggling to lift his huge wellington boots, which more often than not remained stuck in the thick mud, leaving his bare feet to squelch into the wet.

"They're scared by the thunder and lightning," he reported, concerned, "I don't know how to say 'It's okay' in chicken language."

She took a moment in the midst of the commotion to feel some compassion for the boy, smiling and taking his hand.

"They know you're looking out for them, Al. The fear will be gone in the morning. Now are you going to help me keep your insane brother from falling off the roof?"

He nodded, and they lifted the thick rope from out of the mud. Winry tied it around her own waist first, and then around the smaller boy's. She tugged on the engaged end to check that there was sufficient slack to allow Ed to reach the damaged area of the roof, without making it possible for him to hit the ground.

"Right, Ed!" she waved her arms and yelled, her voice almost lost in the howling wind, thundering rain and lashing tree branches.

With scarcely a moment's hesitation, the boy, sitting on the windowsill, leaned backwards, supporting himself with his arms at first, and then giving more and more trust to the rope. In spite of some alarming pulling and creaking, and the sudden jolt on the pair on the ground, it held. Straining, they dug their booted feet into the mud, pulling away from the house to keep their friend aloft. While his weight was supported, he used his arms to pull himself into a standing position, reaching above his head for the great stone guttering, and slowly, with massive effort, he lifted his shoulders, chest, belly, legs onto the steeply-pitched roof.

The wind hit him instantly, threatening to topple him, and he gripped on to the slippery slate roof tiles, scrabbling at first for purchase. The thought that this might have been a terrible mistake, the last he would ever make. Then he was on his hands and knees, weight pressing down through all four points to stabilise himself against the bluster. As his heart steadied, he laughed. Thunder ripped overhead, followed quickly by thunder. He was perfectly, electrically happy.

Hearing indistinct voices from below, he remembered his purpose, and crawled across the roof, looking for the warped timbers, rent solder and displaced tiles. Wood was the most difficult of these materials to work with, its complex fibrous structure was flexible, but incredibly strong. It was also resistant to melting and flowing. Instead, with his hands to the beams, he coaxed the long fibres to untwist, reconfigure, unbending the beams, while being aware of any internal tensions that could cause it to crack.

The lead solder softened, melted and flowed more easily, filling the gaps and binding the beams together. It glowed cherry-red and warmed his fingers. Over his patchwork, he replaced the slate tiles, knocking in new nails where they had corroded or fallen out. No way to know whether this had been successful, though the rain appeared to be running off, hissing and spitting as it cooled the molten lead.

His task completed, he crawled to the apex of the roof, and raised himself, first to his knees, then to his feet. The wind was ferocious, and the thunder sounded very near. The real danger made him feel paradoxically invincible; he had not fallen, so he could not fall. He looked around at the gently rolling, normally green landscape, darkened by the falling sun and the thick grey-purple clouds. Powerful lights flashed in the distance, from the railway bridge. Peering, he saw that the bridge struts were being battered by the swollen river beneath, causing the structure to sway and shiver.

He slid himself cautiously down the roof to the edge, and reversed the process by which he had climbed up. The rope took his weight once again, and then the tug was relieved. His fingers worked impatiently at the cluster of wet knots on his back.

On the ground, Winry was doing the same, unfastening herself and Al from the sodden rope. As they were pulling the house end carefully back through the pulley rings, Ed exploded through the door. Slithering in the mud and wet grass, he ran out of the garden, and down the path towards the road. Naturally, Al followed him, somewhat more slowly, and with some falls. With an exasperated sigh, Winry pursued.

Almost a mile away, the railway bridge over the swollen river was struggling. People from the town had come out, and set up red signals down the track in both directions. The rails began to vibrate, rhythmically, and to ring with the sound of metal on metal. The people scattered from the approaching train, which had seen the signs too late, and hurtled on over the bridge. For a few seconds, it appeared that the bridge might survive, but the pressure of the braking wheels, and the weight of the slowing locomotive, caused it to give way dramatically along two of the upstream piers. The structure gave one last sway downstream, and then lurched towards the water, the locomotive and three carriages plummeting with it.

Ed was certain he heard screaming, even over the rending metal and splintering wood, the immense splash of the heavy train, and the accelerating thunder of the full brown waters. He skid to a halt and reached his hands out pointlessly towards the river, watching the clouds of steam issued from the water, as the boiler rapidly heated the river, and extinguished. The electric lights in the carriages flickered out, as they were flooded. Then bodies - alive? dead? - floated up, along with suitcases, sacks of post, crates of goods, swept away quickly by the river. Through the morass a pair of white arms sliced, making for the shore. The crowd on the bank, watching anxiously, spotted this instantly, and cast a line. The figure struggled to grasp the rope against the tug of the current, but as soon as it appeared to be secure, the group on shore began to haul. In seconds, a woman was hauled, gasping, from the black water. Her thin dress was sodden, black hair clung to her shoulders and back. Her attention was fixed on the river, and no sooner was she on her feet again than she dropped to her knees, her hands planting in the mud of the river bank.

The river waters swirled and surged, its course disrupted by an eruption of mud and shale that slowed the flooded course. Onto this precarious dam, the woman stepped, running for the centre. As the figures of her passengers slipped past, she grabbed for them. Her muscles strained to lift them up to the relative safety of the mid-river bank. As soon as the townsfolk realised what was happening, they too ran for the centre of the river to assist her. Illuminated by lightning and feeble lamplight, sprayed by the relentless cold water, they worked to rescue as many of the living and the dead as they could. The woman manipulated the river bed to direct the last few drifting forms towards the rescue party.

From half a mile away, Ed recognised what was being done. He trembled with excitement, and before his fiends could catch up with him, he began to pelt down the slope towards the river bank. Rain water blinded him, and his feet faltered in the mire. He was ecstatic with happiness. An alchemist!

As he reached the riverside, the woman swayed on her feet. Her hands parted from the alluvial island floor, and the river began to overcome her. The townsfolk struck out, terrified, for the edges of the river, tugged far downstream by the current. One of the strongest among them slung the woman over his shoulder before he leapt from the collapsing island.

On the bank, a score of rescued souls, half of them alive and half dead, laid stretched out in the mud. The rain poured down on all, while drenched figures stood or sat by them, offering what assistance they could. At the fringes of the town, a public-house opened its doors, backed by firelight, and beckoned them inside. The bedraggled procession made for this sanctuary, and Ed strained his eyes for the pale figure of the woman who had raised the river bed. She was not difficult to identify, and he sprinted off again after her rescuer, Winry and Al trailing behind, to be welcomed into the warm, smokey interior where gasping and shivering, and motionless bodies were laid out on tables and on the straw-strewn floor.

He ignored these scenes, looking determinedly for just one figure. This one had been placed closest to the fire, an empty space around her for respect and superstition. He sighted a trail of frothy blood that trickled from her mouth, and erupted from her lips as she coughed dreadfully. Her fists slammed into the table, as she tried to force herself upright with a rattling sigh.

He raced to her side, and drew out his sodden handkerchief to wipe the mess from her face. Her eyes blinking and straining to open, she waved him aside.

"I am fine! There are people still in those waters! We must-"

Her sentence was cut off as she fainted, gasping for breath. Ed was alarmed at the rasping, gurgling noise of her lungs, but remained by her side, dabbing the bloody flecks from around her mouth.

There, Winry and Al found him. He felt briefly guilty to see his tiny brother, plastered with mud and his own ragged clothes like a forlorn scarecrow, and Winry's reproachful look from deep in the hood of her yellow raincoat.

"Idiot!" she exclaimed, as soon as he was within earshot, "The river was in flood, and you decided to run towards, not away from it!" with hardly a pause for breath, she gestured to the shivering, diminutive figure behind her, "Your brother is frightened out of his wits! You know how he hates lightning storms, and you brought him out into the middle of one! Edward, you are without a doubt the most inconsiderate boy in the world! Apologise to him immediately and then come home where it is safe!"

She reinforced her words by striking him across the face with her fist, but her arms were exhausted and her water-blinded aim was poor, so that she only grazed his ear. This did not alleviate her rage. Ed was affected, though, and opened his arms to his brother, who ran to them, pressing his face to his brother's chest and crying unabashedly.

Winry drew a deep breath and watched, conscious that Al's message was more effective than hers. Her curiosity turned to the sodden, blood-stained woman on the table by the fire.

"What did you follow her for?" she asked, unfurling her hood and rubbing her hands for warmth.

"She did something amazing," her friend replied, as he soothed his brother's wet blonde hair, "She made the mud from the river-bed into a sluice. That way, they were able to rescue most of the train passengers." he gestured around the room at the scattering of bodies, around which the townsfolk bustled with hot soup and blankets.

The girl nodded, understanding.

"She's like you."

"Not remotely. She's far better!" with gentle fingers, he wiped the tears from his brother's cheeks, addressing him directly, "we can learn from her."

Al shook his head, uncertain, frightened by the lean, muscular figure, streaked with red trails of blood.

"She's kind, Al," Ed continued, "She saved all those people from the water."

The trio assembled themselves around the fire at the legs of the table that supported their icon, steaming in the heat. The publican took pity on the bedraggled children, and brought them mugs of warm milk and thick wedges of bread and cheese. Having eaten his share, Al tumbled asleep, with his head in Winry's lap. She stroked his head as she looked across at her companion.

"Are you sure you can trust this woman, Ed? You don't know anything about her, except that she was on that train and she's an alchemist. Why doesn't she wear the uniform, or even carry the identification, of a State Alchemist? Perhaps she's a deserter!"

Ed knew better than to tread this ground with Winry. For all of their short lifetimes, they had been friends. He had been there when the telegram arrived to say that her parents had died together on the front-line. To her black-and-white mind, desertion was on a par with murder and bad craftsmanship.

"Let's examine the facts we have," he reasoned, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. She has lost everything in the crash. She has nothing but this dress and one shoe. All we know is that today she is a hero. Also, that she is an alchemist of exceptional talent - she performed complex reactions on volatile systems without a circle. Al and I can learn from her. And if she's bad news, we'll put her on the next train to Central, however long that might take."

The girl seemed placated, and leaned back against the table leg as far as she could without disturbing Al. As she appeared to be falling asleep, Ed allowed himself to dream that the woman might know where his father was, that he was alive. He unravelled a thread from his woollen jumper and tied it off, before securing one end to his wrist, and the other to the pale woman's finger, so that he might know when she woke. Then he laid himself out on the warm wooden planks of the floor before the glowing fire, positioning his body to protect Winry and his brother from any draughts that might sweep through from the door, and slept like the dead.


End file.
